M.H. Abrams (1918–1994) was an American literary critic and an expert on the writings of Samuel Johnson and William Shakespeare. Hailing from a family of philologists, he was also a descendant of Sir Moses Montefiore, the great nineteenth-century philanthropist and social reformer. Abrams wrote on Shakespeare and Johnson as well as on comedy, tragedy, and science fiction; he is best remembered today for his influential scholarship on Elizabethan drama and for his translations of many of the plays of Shakespeare and the Greek tragedians
His first book, Samuel Johnson: Life of an Enigma, was published in 1965; later editions were revised and expanded with additional material. The book was adapted into the film Enigma (2001). He also wrote a biography of Sir Moses Montefiore (1971), which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity. The appeal of literature is that it is so thoroughly a human thing – by, for and about human beings. If you lose that focus, you obviate the source of the power and permanence of literature.M.H. Abrams
It's amazing how, age after age, in country after country, and in all languages, Shakespeare emerges as incomparable.M.H. Abrams
